the simple system

"want to go pound them ponies?"...not even  an answer to my telephonic hello - just a simple question.  i knew who it was, of course...the call came pretty regularly on sunday mornings during the thoroughbred racing season at delaware park.  a friend of mine, tom o'donnell, tsnake to his intimates, had come up with a handicapping system that was uncanny in its success rate that year...for a couple of years in fact and the caller, bobby carpenter, had quickly adopted it as his own.  he called me because i was quick with math - it was a pure math based - hence simple - system.  he was not as he proved when he took on the calculations himself and began to modify them to, ultimately, the dissolution of the product.

the simple system was a speed based rating calculation...we refined it a bit but in any race it took into consideration the entries last three performances and established the top three candidates for a bet.  i, and bobby, then, generally boxed those in exactas - tom was more of a straight bettor.  for some reason delaware park held a significant speed bias through that first summer, and partway through the next, so speed ratings proved to be all one needed to be a winner.

i don't remember how much i won that year...but it was enough to keep me going back and using the same calculations over and over again.  bobby, lately recovered from heart surgery, proudly announced he'd won $842 at the meeting - the best year he'd ever had. he further claimed we'd saved his life - helped him recover from the depression so often associated with artery reaming.  things fell apart midway through the next season - the track speed bias disappeared - but it was a hell of a lot of fun while it lasted.

the next adventure the tsnake and i had involved 10 cent superfectas - we won four in one day.  most bettors go a lifetime without winning one superfecta, let alone four in one day.  in spite of our handicapping ability we lost $75 a piece...a story for another time.